pinched my nose closed, which was the way Mom had taught us to get
down things that had gone a little bit rotten. Erma saw me and slapped
my hand away. "Beggars can't be choosers," she said.
There were three bedrooms upstairs, Erma said, but no one had been to
the second floor in nigh on ten years, because the floorboards were rotted
through. Uncle Stanley volunteered to give us his room in the basement
and sleep on a cot in the foyer while we were there. "We'll only be
staying a few days," Dad said. "until we find a place of our own."
After dinner, Mom and us kids went down into the basement. It was a big
dank room, with cinder-block walls and a green linoleum floor. There
was another coal stove, a bed, a pullout couch where Mom and Dad
could sleep, and a chest of drawers painted fire-engine red. It held
hundreds of dog-eared comic books—Little Lulu, Richie Rich, Beetle
Bailey, Archie and Jughead—that Uncle Stanley had collected over the
years. Under the chest of drawers were jugs of genuine moonshine.
We kids climbed into Stanley's bed. To make it less crowded, Lori and I
lay down with our heads at one end, and Brian and Maureen lay down
with theirs at the other. Brian's feet were in my face, so I grabbed him by
the ankles and started chewing on his toes. He laughed and kicked and
started chewing on my toes in retaliation, and that made me laugh. We
heard a loud thunk thunk thunk from above.
"What's that?" Lori asked.
"Maybe the roaches here are bigger than in Phoenix," Brian said. We all
laughed and heard the thunk thunk thunk again. Mom went upstairs to
investigate, then came down and explained that Erma was hitting the
floor with a broom handle to signal that we were making too much noise.
"She asked that you kids don't laugh while you're in her house," Mom
said. "It gets on her nerves."